A commonly asked question is, "How do I keep my customer from seeing my site while I work on it?"  The answer is to use a feature that is often called the "maintenance mode". This option is quite often a plugin or extension, but in Prestashop, the programmers have kindly added it as a built-in feature. Be sure that you have updated PrestaShop to the latest version as this procedure will vary between the current release and past versions.  Maintenance mode allows you to keep the shop from being accessed by the general public, while allowing you to specify access to who you desire.

Using Maintenance Mode in PrestaShop 1.5

1. Login to the PrestaShop 1.5 Administration Panel as an Administrator user.
2. If you are managing multiple shops, you will see the Multistore configuration option at th etop of the screen.  Simply click on the drop down arrow in order to select the store for which you wish to use MAINTENANCE MODE.
   
   
   
3. Select PREFERENCES from the Menu.  You will see a drop-down menu and you will see MAINTENANCE.  Select MAINTENANCE  to proceed.  When you click on MAINTENANCE, you will something similar to below:
   

   

    

4. Go to the GENERAL section and then click on ENABLE or DISABLE as needed. Note that you will need to select the checkboxes to the left of the entries in order to make changes if you are using the multistore option and specifying the change for a single store.  If the multistore option is set to ALL SHOPS, then you will not see the checkboxes. The checkboxes will only appear when the multistore option has been enabled and a single store has been selected.
5. If you wish to allow a computer to see the store being developed or maintained while in maintenance mode, you can do so by adding their IP address.  For example, if your IP address to access the internet is 73.333.333.444, then type it into the field.  If you need to add multiple IP addresses then separate them with commas.  
6. Click on SAVE in the top right hand corner in to save your entries.

While the shop is DISABLED, you can make changes to it and no one will be able to see the site (unless their IP has been added to the MAINTENANCE IP section) until you re-enable it. This makes it very convenient to develop or maintain your site on the primary address without allowing anyone access to your site.